GARL or Who Makes up These Contracts?

Well, I’ve not talked about politics and transport for a while, and here is a post which kind of combines both.

Just recently the SNP has announced its new budget; something that has caused much consternation was the cancellation of the Glasgow Airport Rail Link.

Now on the political side, the SNP hasn’t exactly done itself any favours. They must have known that this would be unpopular. The Greens are already complaining that a public transport initiative was cut while road building continues and Labour are claiming that the SNP are anti-Glasgow. Now, I will come to the reasons that the project is claimed to have been cancelled in a minute or so. First I’ll go over how this could have been better handled.

The SNP should have known this would be an unpopular decision, and so I would have suggested a good offence with this one. I still expect to hear is that Westminster has cut the Scottish budget, and so this is their fault, but I think they already know that argument has incredibly limited mileage, regardless of how much the Westminster labour government does seem to want to show up the SNP. (Still sore about loosing the Scottish parliament as their own rubber stamp service I guess) A good direction would have been to blame the Edinburgh trams, as they tried to shut down that white elephant but were blocked, and the project has now spiralled out of control, they could have argued that there would have been plenty of money to pay for GARL if the Edinburgh tram project could have been canned.

The actual reason given, although the SNP haven’t really been playing it to its full, a pretty poor move politically, is that the costs were becoming significantly greater than initially stated. This is actually an intriguing angle. If they played it as stopping another Scottish Parliament or Edinburgh tram wild overspend before it started, they may get some more understanding and support on the decision, after all, they would be wildly slated if the project ran wild on their watch.

What actually confuses me is this, how do these projects run wild?

I’m an engineer, and while studying my HNC we covered contracts in a little detail, much has sadly vacated my empty head, but the basic Tendering process and contract rules have not. The basic gist is this. Someone wants a big project undertaken, say a building built. The client will usually provide a specification, plus surveys and all the information a contractor needs to make an estimate. The contractors will then make up a document explaining how they would conduct the project, what timescale it would be completed in and how much it would cost. The contract types generally hold bonuses for early completion, and also some bonuses for coming in under budget. Similarly there are penalties for running late, and generally any cost over-runs must be covered by the contractor. This works because it keeps both sides honest (It’s actually more complicated with clauses for various possibilities of delay but this simple explanation should fit)

However for some reason Government projects seem to work differently. For these if a contractor runs over time or over budget, the Government covers the shortfall, and I’ve no idea why. Why should costs spiral for a tender when a contract has been agreed. If we are farming big projects out to private companies, particularly high profile ones such as Trams or a Parliament building, then we should basically say “Well you said you could do it for amount X, that’s what we gave you, now we want our building to spec, if you’ve under bid, that’s your problem.”

Now back to the SNP, if they could commission some works, and have them come in on budget and on time, they could build a reputation for better practice on bug projects. No spiralling costs with this government. Sadly, from how it’s been played so far, this may be the breaking of them.

Savage She-Hulk

Savage She-Hulk was always going to be a tough sell on me. See, I got into the character reading Dan Slott and then Peter David’s runs on the character, and was one of those who thought that David’s run was cut short. Then again I was also holding out for a Lady Liberators title. So when the announcement came of a new She-Hulk I was more than a little sceptical.

Savage She-Hulk concerns Lyra, daughter of the Hulk and Thundra, who has come from a possible alternate future to find Earth 616’s most powerful man.

So, first the good things, the art is good and it was nice to see the real She-Hulk turn up. Story wise, it was ok. We see some good Dark Reign style manoeuvring, Osborne wants to take in Lyra to show that he should be running ARMOUR (the group in charge of alternate universe incursions) the twist on Hulks powers is a neat touch, Lyra gets weaker the more angry she gets, and her tamagochi companion talking watch thing is quite funny in the first few panels but isn’t a laboured joke.

Downsides, well, she isn’t Jen. And that is more than a fanboy whine criticism, Jen was fun, Lyra is pretty serious, art wise they weren’t afraid to make Jen pretty muscular and near Amazonian, while Lyra is definitely aimed more towards the cheesecake market, a shame as Peter David really was aiming to make She-Hulk Marvel’s wonder woman (In fact what they were also trying to do with Ms Marvel). Mainly, I’m just not as interested in Lyra, even in the final panel setup where she is She-Hulk, agent of ARMOUR.

In isolation, the story is patchy, basically act 1, Lyra Vs generic agents, act 2, Lyra vs. She-Hulk, Acts 3&4 Lyra vs. Dark Avengers (Who get about a lot) and so it really is pretty much fights interspersed with flashbacks. There is some interest in the alternate, female led future however, where Osborne has become head of everything and started marketing super powered enhancements, earth females are all that’s left of civilisation while males are factioned into representatives of the male dark avengers.

In fact I think I’d have preferred a story with Lyra set in her alternate future, that way it would form more of a She-Hulk legacy as opposed to looking like trying to replace the existing character.

It doesn’t help that for the moment She-Hulk appears to be MIA, with rumours of a red She-hulk appearing means the future is uncertain for Jen, for once, let’s hope the reset button comes in and Lyra is consigned to a historical curiosity. Sorry Savage She-Hulk team, but you didn’t manage to turn me around.

Last Years TV - Pushing Daisies

Don’t worry; some big comic stories are coming to an end. We won’t just have reviews of last years TV until next year.

Pushing Daisies showed its final season this year. I was quite surprised it even got a second season, not because of any low quality in the show; no it was because it was such a strange and quirky piece of TV that I am still amazed it ever got past a board of execs.

This series continued the adventures of Ned, A pie maker who can bring people back from the dead. It contained the usual, episodic quirky murder of the week combined with the ongoing sub-plots such as the Ned/Chuck/Olive love triangle and Emerson’s search for his missing daughter. As a nice addition the finale had a 5 minute sequence roughly establishing how things panned out for all of the characters, while leaving the door open for more possibilities such as the proposed comic.

I’m going to miss this, its high production costs always meant it wasn’t going to survive in today’s cutthroat world of TV. As SFX pointed out in their preview of US Fall TV the wild experimentation of 2 or 3 years ago has past, scheduled next year is a long line of safe options, some promising safe options but safe none the less. Pushing Daisies shows what you can get when networks are willing to give anything a punt; it’s a series that the word Delightful was invented for, a small corner of technocolour joy in the grim dark world of modern TV, a series that could have a character in it called Randy Mann without it becoming annoying.

At the moment though I’ll have to bid a sad farewell to Ned the pie maker, to Charlotte Charles and her synchronised swimmer aunts, to Olive Snook and her random bursts into song and to Emerson Cod and all the other wonderful characters this series created.

DVD boxed sets you say, on my Xmas list.

Avengers: The Initiative #27

The Initiative was almost on my drop list, Until the Disassembled storyline finished and suddenly its proper Dark Reign story kicked in. However that's not what I want to talk about.

Issue #27 mainly features the new Shadow Initiative, now not the black ops squad but more of a suicide squad made up of expendables. The issue is split into two parts, part two concerns the Shadow Initiatives mission to take back the negative zone prison recently conquered by Blastaarr in Guardians of the Galaxy and their slow realisation that they are now cannon fodder. However the first part is a story that is up there with one of the Initiatives finest stories. Yes, Christos Gage has written his very own washout.

The story is written from diary entries by Johnny Guitar, chronicling his and his friend Doctor Sax's progress through the villainous underground to eventually join the Shadow Initiative. Who, well in their own words, they fought Dazzler once.

Yes, Johnny Guitar and Dr Sax are every bit as Z-List as their names suggest. Gague however makes us feel for them, two small town losers, wanting to play music for a living but who fall into a life of crime and eventual super-villainy to support their families. It actually gives you a look about how so many of these small time criminals might decide to make up a themed costume and get a kicking from Daredevil once a month. In fact, the "Big Time" villain who tells them both to try super villainy and indeed later join Osbourne's initiative is none other that Pete Petruski, aka the trpaster, or as most know him, Paste Pot Pete, arguably the biggest looser on Spider-Man's list of foes.

Overall its a touching character based story, and you know what, I think this type of thing, a story focused on one character and their time in the initiative, could be this titles real power. I'm not against its arc plots etc, but more stories like "Washout" and "Even the Losers" would be great.

Last Years TV - Battlestar Galactica

And on to another series that aired its finale this year. The end to Galactica had been eagerly awaited and not without some trepidation, could they do the series justice? Will we like the ending?

Fortunately this latter half season delivered, it delivered a lot. We have the fleet slowly tearing itself apart after the revelation that earth is a nuclear wasteland, reveal of the fifth Cylon and the cracking Mutiny. One of the funny things was how many comments that had come in last season over how annoyed Gaeta should be, he looses a leg and Starbuck just keeps getting indulged. Finally he cracks and the story is compelling stuff.

On the subject of Galactica I sometimes think its importance is overlooked. It’s getting mainstream awards and is frequently mentioned alongside non-genre TV. I may have harped on about this before but Galactica is so much more than normal crossover genre TV. Lost, Heroes even the X-Files were all set in friendly present day, its familiar and if you screw up your eyes you can pretend that you’re not watching SF, because all that SF stuff is childish and unrealistic unlike say 24 (No offence to any fans of 24 but it does get more outlandish than a lot of SF)

Galactica didn’t give you that comfort; we have humans living on a fleet of space ships being chased by killer robots. Try and tell me that isn’t SF. Surprisingly people saw through it, and aside from the odd patronising article usually citing how SF is normally for weird geeks with no girlfriends, but this is really good, it showed that crossover appeal can be achieved with a full SF setting.

While the credit crunch has sapped budgets, and indeed the Caprica spinoff looks a lot more like normal “Friendly” crossover stuff (Set on Caprica, but I’m curious how many SF trappings we will actually have) It shows it can be done. I just hope a writer takes advantage.